


A Little Dream

by lustmordred



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:19:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lustmordred/pseuds/lustmordred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah never really ever escaped the maze.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Dream

What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story,  
And the greatest good is little enough:  
for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

  
_Pedro Calderon de la Barca_   


 

Sarah never really ever escaped the maze. She couldn’t forget it and she couldn’t forget him, but everyone said it was all in her head, so she kept it to herself. And for a little while, it was all in her head, but then the magic started to bleed out around the edges and she’d see things.

She’d see goblins hiding themselves in her laundry hamper. She would open the lid and it was only her sweater, but she’d swear she heard high pitched, giggling laughter. Playful, mischievous fairy laughter.

She saw shadows of things that were not there in her peripheral vision. She’d turn her head, and it was nothing, but people would stare.

She dreamed, more than her waking dreams, and would wake in a cold sweat with Jareth’s melodic, taunting voice still ringing in her ears.

And the things she craved, they went beyond food, sex, knowledge, and comfort. She had a monstrous craving for the way the light slanted through the trees inside the Labyrinth. She had a desire to play hopscotch along the pathways and see how many intricate patterns the goblins could make from her chalk markings on the stones while trying to confuse her and make her lose her way. She wanted to become lost in the woods and curl up to sleep in the enchanted grass with pixies nipping at her shoulders like mosquitoes.

It was her strange desires more than anything else that finally got her sent away. She was crazy, they said, and perhaps it was even true. Such a deep, lingering touch of magic as that which still lived in her, if neglected, could only lead to madness.

And then he came to her one night in her padded room and Sarah knew; she was indeed mad.

Jareth stood at the foot of her bed in the shadows of the dark room, glowing like he had swallowed the moon. She sat up and said his name and he put out his hand to touch her and disappeared.

Sarah curled up on the bed and cried herself dry, then fell back into an exhausted, homesick sleep.

She didn’t tell anyone, not her therapist, not her friends living there in the institution with her, not the night nurses who sometimes kept her company; no one. This was one dream that she guarded jealously, mostly because deep down where she almost dared not to hope, she wanted it to not be a dream at all.

It didn’t happen again for over a month, but then one night she woke and there he was, this time kneeling at the foot of her bed, his elbow on the edge of the mattress and his chin propped up in his hand.

“Jareth?” she asked, scarcely daring to believe it.

He nodded. He held out his other hand to her and opened it to reveal a small, glowing crystal ball, alive with prisms and bright with magic. “Say the words, Sarah,” he said. “You know them.”

“Yes, but… I can’t,” she said.

She put out her hand and ran her index finger over the smooth side of the crystal. It was warm and pulsed with life against her fingertip.

“You know the way home,” Jareth said.

What he did not say, what Sarah was intensely grateful that he did not remind her of, was that she had already been given a chance to stay and refused it. She wanted to ask him why he would give her another, but she didn’t.

Instead, she closed her hand with his around the crystal he held and let him draw her off the bed to stand with him. The floor was cold on her feet, but she hardly noticed and the crystal under her palm seemed to push warmth into her body.

She started to tell him again that she couldn’t, tell him no and send him away, but then she thought of the world she was in. How much she didn’t fit in space that had been cut out for her in it anymore. How the slightest scent of magic could make her dizzy with joy and sorrow in equal measure.

“I want to go home,” Sarah whispered.

Jareth regarded her calmly with his strange, two-tone eyes and waited. He held her hand and stood there waiting like it was something he intended to go on doing forever.

Sarah swallowed around a lump in her throat, all that she would lose running through her mind alongside all that she would get back again. She took a breath, let it out, and said the words.

“I wish the goblins would come and take me away right now,” she said.

There was no flash of light, no thunder, the earth did not move and sky did not fall, but she opened her eyes, not even aware that she had closed them until they opened, and saw light that was too golden and bright flashing off of dew caught in the petals of flowers that were too beautiful. She breathed in and tasted magic on her tongue and Jareth was looking down at her and laughing a deep, lovely rumble in his throat.

“Welcome home,” he murmured.

Sarah looked at him and smiled, and yes he was still a bastard and she wasn’t sure what his motives were, but she knew he had them, but in that perfect moment it didn’t seem to matter. “Thank you.”

He smiled at her and brushed hair back from her temple, long fingers lingering in the strands for a little while. “You’re very welcome,” he said.

 

  


**XXX**   



End file.
